little things

Little things accomplished, but important ones. We've put the kitchen cabinets back up, freshly painted with some new and some repainted hinges. Eventually we'd like to replace the cabinets and counter tops, but in the interim these will do.


















Ted installed a ceiling fan in his office. It took longer than the instructions promised (as does most everything around here, especially electrical things) but it works, it doesn't wobble, and it looks great. Here's a shot of it in action:














And last, after two months we finally settled on a mirror and light fixtures for the bathroom. That it's been two months of grooming in the dark and without a mirror may explain why we've lately come to resemble Dan Rather and Jason Biggs (see below).

i love craigslist

Not only have we sold 2 out of the last 3 cars on craigslist, we just got rid of an old, dirty, (soviet?) "Teknika" air conditioner that has been in the garage since we moved in and all 4 of the aluminum shades on the exterior of the house. A quick, free ad posted to the local, internet-going community and some lucky strangers are now the proud owners of our junk!














It's gone! Thanks Jared, whoever you are.

celebrity twins

We haven't done all that much on the house in the last few weeks. Instead, we visited family and friends in Wisconsin and New York, and then had a friend here. Nice visits all.

While we're working on renovations to photograph and post up, here's something slightly different. The website www.myheritage.com will run a facial algorithm and let you know which celebrity it thinks you most resemble.

I've always thought Ted looked like (a much cuter) Keanu Reeves. Alas, the man of my dreams looks most like Dan Rather. Here's proof:
















Lucky, though, all things considered. When Ted looks at me, he just might see this:













Jason Biggs, star of American Pie, my number one match.

That I look also like Grace Kelly, Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts and William Shatner is indeed cold comfort.

curious

The new view from our front door. The sign in the neighbor's yard reads, "Springfield the city of homes... you can almost afford to live in."

indoor pool

On the morning of the day sandwiched between my [Ted's] last day of teaching and our trip to Wisconsin I headed down to make coffee.

I heard a noise – diffuse, but loud.

“Is that the street sweeper?” I wondered?

A quick check outside suggested that it was not. Could that be coming from the basement?

A quick check down there revealed that the noise was in fact coming from the basement. I rushed downstairs to investigate a situation that was clearly a bad one, only to discover that we had in fact crossed into the realm of disaster.

My steps picked up pace as I realized that the sound was in fact being caused by water was jetting out of a broken pipe connection...

thump thump thump went my steps, picking up pace.

thump thump splash went my steps as I moved from the stairs onto the basement floor which was, my shoes and feet discovered, covered in about 4 inches of water.

At a nearly irrecoverable state of dismay, we did manage to recall that our next door neighbor had required the services of someone to remove water from his basement, and that our neighbors across the street had recommended a plumber who helped them out of a similar situation.

Phone calls followed, and by 10 a.m. we were visited by a disaster restoration squad who Kelly watched arrive at the house as if rushing to a fire. Hoses went into our new swimming pool and removed it into the tanks of the two disaster restoration vans. (They were welcome to it.)

Next came the friendly plumber, whose van featured a reassuring smiley face. He identified the source of our problem as one of the many corroded-looking basement pipe fixtures. Sadly, the one that broke was by no means the worst of the bunch, so, in the interest of avoiding future basement adventures, we commissioned (and are now the owners of) a new plumbing system for the basement. The highlight of which, from my perspective, is that the refrigerator’s icemaker is now hooked up very nicely, and is producing the ice for the drinks required by this whole mess.